The Huguenots and French Opinion, 1685-1787

The decision of Louis XIV to revoke the Edict of Nantes and thus liquidate French Calvinism was well received in the intellectual community which was deeply prejudiced against the Huguenots. This antipathy would gradually disappear. After the death of the Sun King, a more sympathetic view of the Protestant minority was presented to French readers by leading thinkers such as Montesquieu, the abbé Prévost, and Voltaire. By the middle years of the eighteenth century, liberal clerics, lawyers, and government ministers joined Encyclopedists in urging the emancipation of the Reformed who were seen to be loyal, peaceable and productive. Then, in 1787, thanks to intensive lobbying by a group which included Malesherbes, Lafayette, and the future revolutionary Rabaut Saint-Étienne, the government of Louis XVI issued an edict of toleration which granted the Huguenots a modest bill of civil and religious rights.

Adams’ illuminating work treats a major chapter in the history of toleration; it explores in depth a fascinating shift in mentalités, and it offers a new focus on the process of “reform from above” in pre-Revolutionary France.

preface, title page, copyright, dedication

Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Attempts to trace the social impact of ideas are bound to be at one and the
same time fascinating, complex, and subtle. Those of us who were fortunate
enough to study under the late Louis Gottschalk at the University of Chicago
were inevitably drawn to such studies while being solemnly forewarned of
the risks involved. ...

Introduction

A little over a generation ago, Lucien Febvre, who had already established
his reputation as an historian of mentalités, urged his Protestant colleague
Emile-G. Leonard to write a general study of the French Calvinist
community for the public at large. There was a need for such a work,
Febvre argued, ...

Part One: The Revocation Imposed, 1685-1715

I. The Edict of Fontainebleau: The Rationalization of Intolerance

When Louis XIV began his personal reign in 1661, France's religious
minorities were probably better off than any in Europe. The Reformed, in
particular, enjoyed a large measure of civil and religious freedom derived
from the Edict of Nantes promulgated by Henri IV in 1598. ...

With a very few exceptions, all that was distinguished in the intellectual and
spiritual leadership of France—academicians and writers in or near the
court, painters, sculptors, and engravers, orthodox and dissident
Catholics—joined in celebrating the King's decision to revoke the Edict of
Nantes.1 ...

III. A Three-way Impasse: The Huguenots, The Clergy, and The State

The failure of the Edict of Fontainebleau to extinguish French Calvinism
posed enormous problems for the three parties most directly affected. For
the thousands of Huguenots who chose to remain in France and practise
their faith in defiance of the law, the penalties were grim, ...

Part Two: The Revocation Attacked, 1715-1760

IV. An Abstract Combat: Voltaire's First Battles Against Intolerance, 1713-1750

The reconstruction of French Calvinism which began in earnest during the
Regency period coincided with the advent of a generation of writers intent
upon subjecting the inheritance of Louis XIV to an exhaustive critique. One
of the major items in the lengthy indictment which they subsequently
produced ...

V. Montesquieu and the Huguenots: A Conservative's View of Minority Rights

As the most conservative of the major thinkers of the French Enlightenment,
Montesquieu might seem at first glance an unlikely champion of civil rights
for non-conformists. Indeed, in his widely read L'Esprit des lois, the
scholarly magistrate added to the embarrassment of the Huguenots ...

VI. A Friend in the Enemy Camp: The Abbé Prévost

In his understanding of the Protestant world, the abbe Prévost had one very
real advantage over most French writers of his time, in that for six years,
beginning in 1728, he abandoned his monastic vows and became, nominally
at least, a convert to Calvinism. Prior to this, Prévost had developed a
considerable knowledge ...

Sometime during the spring of 1751, Controller-General of Finances Jean-Baptiste Machault, a protégé of Madame de Pompadour, concluded that the
Huguenots of the diaspora, whose aptitude for commerce was well
established, should be invited to help pull France out of the economic crisis ...

VIII. Encyclopedists and Calvinists: An Exercise in Mutual Aid

The first seven volumes of the Encyclopédie containing the articles
beginning with the letters A to G, appeared between June 1751 and
November 1757, a period during which, as we have seen, the question of
Huguenot rights was being publicly debated in France for the first time since
the Revocation. ...

IX. A Case Study in Incompatibility: The Philosophe Voltaire and the Calvinist La Beaumelle, 1750-1756

During the six-year period beginning in July 1750 when he arrived at the
court of Frederick of Prussia, Voltaire came to grips with the realities of the
French Calvinist experience for the first time. To begin with, he met
scholarly Calvinist pastors such as Samuel Formey and Charles Louis de
Beausobre, ...

X. Mutual Disenchantment: Voltaire and the Genevans, 1755-1762

During the years immediately preceding the Calas affair, Voltaire lived near
Geneva and was thus able to observe Calvinist society at close range. In an
effort to "civilize the natives," he presented plays on his property at Les
Delices, defying the local taboo against the theatre. ...

XI. Distant Cousins: Rousseau and the French Calvinists

Of all the men of letters to whom the Huguenots turned for help in their
struggle for civil rights in pre-Revolutionary France, none seemed a more
plausible ally than Jean-Jacques Rousseau. To begin with, the Swiss writer
was himself descended from a victim of French religious discrimination,
Didier Rousseau, ...

XII. The Stage in the Service of Huguenot Emancipation: Voltaire, Fenouillot de Falbaire, and Mercier

During the eighteenth-century debate over toleration, champions of the
Calvinist cause usually put their argument in prose; but the case for religious
freedom was sometimes made by playwrights, most of whom wrote in
verse. Voltaire made his theatrical assault on intolerance with Oedipe
(1718), Zaïre (1732), Alzire (1736), and Mahomet (1742); ...

XIII. Reaction Put to Rout: The Dictionnaire Philosophique, the Last of the Encyclopédie and the Bélisaire Affair, 1764-1767

During the middle 1760s, while Voltaire's interest in the Calas and Sirven
cases was at its most intense, three bombshells burst on the French literary
scene which, coming in rapid succession, decisively altered the balance in
the long battle for toleration. It is true that apologists of the Revocation had
been on the defensive since the late 1750s, ...

Part Three: The Revocation Undone, 1760-1787

XIV. The 1760s: From Words to Deeds

By the beginning of the 1760s, what remained of the negative image of the
French Reformed was beginning to fade, and an increasingly sensitive
public was being made aware of the very real sufferings still being endured
by the Huguenots. The Calas affair would do much to replace old myths of
Protestant fanaticism ...

XV. The Calas Affair: A Catalyst for the National Conscience, 1762-1765

Like Alfred Dreyfus more than a century later, Jean Calas, found guilty of a
crime which posterity judges he did not commit, belonged to a minority
whose ideas and customs were considered suspect, even threatening, by
many French Catholics. But, while anti-Semitic prejudice predisposed much
of the nation's social and intellectual establishment ...

XVI. Large Expectations, Limited Gains: The Reform Efforts of Turgot and Malesherbes, 1774-1776

The character of the young prince who mounted the French throne in May
1774 was such that both pro- and anti-Calvinist groups rejoiced at the news
of his accession. The Huguenots and their friends in the philosophe camp
saw in the nineteen-year old Louis XVI a man of compassion, too sensitive
to allow any of his subjects to suffer oppression or discrimination. ...

XVII. Conservatives and Pragmatists Try Their Hand: Necker, Armand, and the Parlementaires, 1776-1784

The resignations of Turgot and Malesherbes in the spring of 1776 removed
from the administration its only outspoken supporters of the Huguenots'
cause. In the months that followed, government policy towards the
Calvinists toughened, especially in areas where the Protestant revival was
recent and perceived to be provocative. ...

XVIII. Genteel Conspirators: Breteuil and Malesherbes Set the Stage for Reform, 1784-1787

In October 1783, when he put Louis-Auguste Le Tonnelier, the baron de
Breteuil, in charge of 'new Catholic' affairs, Louis XVI inadvertently
opened the penultimate chapter in the campaign for Protestant toleration.
Although the new minister did not become personally committed to the
Calvinist cause ...

XIX. Spurs to Action: The D'Anglure Affair and the Dutch Crisis, 1787

The Calvinists' discouragement at the government's failure to act on their
behalf in the spring of 1787 was short-lived. For one thing, the ministry
formed by Lomenie de Brienne following his appointment in May was more
favourably disposed towards the Huguenots than any of its eighteenth-century
predecessors. ...

XX. Toleration Triumphant: The Edict of 1787

Its favourable intentions concerning Calvinist toleration having been forced
into the open by the Anglure affair as well as the crisis in the Netherlands,
the administration of Lomenie de Brienne finally resolved to act. Rather
foolishly as it turned out, the ministry decided to couple its proposed edict of
toleration ...

Epilogue

Given the prolonged resistance of the ecclesiastical establishment to any
form of Protestant emancipation, and given the major institutional crisis
France was experiencing in the late 1780s, the Edict of 1787 was less than a
full and explicit bill of rights. One can only speculate whether or not this
half-measure would have served as an appropriate basis ...

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